Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations trotlined for the first time

Yesterday my 13 year old son and I put out 200 feet of trotline. The line had a total of 40 2/0 hooks. We used square stink bait cubes. This afternoon we ran the lines and caught 18 catfish. We weighed the fish and they totalled 60 lbs. After we cleaned and cut the fish into steaks and filleted a few they weighted 28lbs.

These fish were caught in our 1.25 acre pond. We are getting some fish together for a big fish fry on May 1st.

If anyone is interested in trotlining I found a good DVD from Memphis net & twine it is called Mark Hewgley's "HOT TO TROT" It is an excellent dvd on trotlining I think you will really enjoy it. It was 35.oo for the dvd.

If you use chicken gizzards you might catch a bunch of turtles.........

Wow that's pretty good for a pond that is only 1.25 acres. Sounds like good eating too!


I was doing a creel survey for my state DNR during my college days on a local reservoir. I wore a kaki shirt with the DNR patch etc. A big burly guy jumped out of the his boat and acted like he wanted to take a swing at me. He pulled a bag out of his boat with a trot line rig and wanted to know what the hell the DNR was doing putting these things into the lake as he stepped into it.

I had to explain the DNR does not use trot lines. God some people are ignorant!

Cecil when I first stocked the pond on January 12th 2007 I put 250 catfish and 1 month to the day February 12th 2007 I put another 100 catfish. I thought family would harvest some but I've found they like to catch the cats but don't want to clean them. So I've been feeding these fish for 2 years and very few taken out. I know they have been reproducing because I see many small cats. You don't think It's a problem taking 60 pounds at one time do you?

It's absolutely not a problem. It's outstanding! They average more than 3 pounds each. That means, if you had 60% survival of your original stocking (it was probably higher than that) and 40% survival of your second stocking (it was probably higher than that), you have approximately 150 fish from the first batch and 40 from the second. If that's true, you have at least 500 pounds of catfish in your 1.25 acre pond. Since they are reproducing (which isn't normal), you NEED to harvest fish or Mother Nature will do it for you. By harvesting fish you are following one of the key tenets of fisheries management. I would venture to say you can take out that many more for your fish fry and do the population some good.
You know how much you are feeding...if you are feeding more than 25-40 pounds of fish food weekly, harvesting another 100 pounds would help the pond.
At some point, depending how much you feed, what kind of feed you use, how often your pond flushes with fresh water, the biomass of fish exceeds "carry capacity" and the water quality begins to deteriorate. Essentially, the fish reach a density where the water can't possibly process the amount of waste the catfish population produces. Over time, the fish are basically swimming in their own waste and your pond becomes a septic tank. When that happens, usually during hot, dry, cloudy weather, you will experience a fish kill.
So, the Pond Boss hats are off to you for harvesting fish. I wish more people would do it.
They taste better off a trotline than when they do the backstroke.

Bob, I say they are reproducing based on the fact I see smaller catfish but they also are eating size. I have never seen any really small fish like you do with the bass and bream. So maybe the smaller cats just haven't eaten like the larger ones. We caught several that were 4.5 pounds and they were full of eggs.
So maybe they haven't reproduced. I just assumed based on the smaller catfish.

My dad said it will take half a pound of fish per person at a fish fry. Thanks for the response.